Travis County gets old federal courthouse for probate court expansion

Friday

After a failed bond referendum and months of uncertainty, Travis County’s overcrowded civil courthouse will soon get some relief.

Officials announced Thursday morning that the federal government approved the county’s application to take the old U.S. courthouse at 200 W. Eighth St. for its probate court and clerks offices.

"Thanks, Uncle Sam, for a wonderful Christmas present," County Judge Sarah Eckhardt said with a big grin Thursday as U.S. General Services Administration Regional Administrator Sylvia Hernandez handed her the red-ribboned, for-show deed.

The 81-year-old building, which has sat vacant for four years, had been declared surplus by the federal government and will therefore be free of cost to the county.

Travis County officials have been searching for a way to free up space in the aging, 85-year-old Heman Sweatt Travis County Courthouse several blocks away since last year when voters rejected a $287 million bond that would have paid for a new civil courthouse.

"Although this gift from our federal partners does not solve all our overall court capacity issues long term, it is a great reliever of our current overcrowding," Eckhardt said, before thanking many federal, state and local supporters. "We have a process ahead of us. This is a beautiful grand lady of a building, and we will have some work to be done on it in order to keep it in the grandeur that our community expects."

County officials estimate it will cost $28 million to renovate the old building for modern use and to bring it up to code. They expect it will open in 2020.

The county will have to preserve the building’s historic elements, as it is on the National Register of Historic Places. The building, constructed in 1936, has many Depression-era modern architectural details such as its central massing, rectangular form, vertical flow of window bays, decorative metal rails and geometric details, Hernandez said.

U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, said the transfer of the building to Travis County represents an investment in not just the building’s preservation but in the justice system.

"What we have today really is an old home of justice, a very old home of justice through many decades, now once again achieving its purpose as a place for justice for the future here in Travis County," Doggett said.

U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel, who sat as a judge in the former federal courthouse from 2003 to 2012, said it was important to members of the federal judiciary that the courthouse retain its original purpose.

"We wanted this building to continue to be used as a courthouse to emphasize its historical antecedents and how important it’s been to Austin," Yeakel said.

As of now, the county only has one probate court, but Probate Judge Guy Herman has projected a need to open a second court within the next five years. Eckhardt said she foresees the building holding two courtrooms by 2020 and four by 2035.

The county wasn’t the only interested suitor for the building. Front Steps, a homeless services provider, had also filed an application to convert the space into permanent supportive housing.

The nonprofit was a spot ahead of the county because of a federal law requiring that uses pertaining to serving the homeless people take priority over other requests, but its application was rejected last week.

"Keeping it in the judiciary was really the only way to go," Doggett said. "We all want to do more for the homeless, but it would have been the most expensive homeless facility in the country because, as you can see, you can’t preserve these features and use it for apartments. So I hope that other ways can be found to meet what is clearly a big problem in our community."

The county is still looking for sites for a new civil and family courthouse. The community advisory committee leading the search will bring its top three choices to the Travis County Commissioners Court, likely in February.

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